The present invention relates to networks. More specifically, the invention relates to techniques for creating iBGP meshes in networks.
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a routing protocol for the Internet Protocol (IP). As such, BGP is used extensively in routers on the Internet. In general, the goal of a routing protocol in networks is to ensure that information can be sent between network devices (including computers) in the network.
The distribution of BGP routing information within an autonomous system (AS) typically requires all routers to be fully meshed. In order to establish a full mesh, each BGP speaker (e.g., router or route reflector) is manually configured with the identities of its neighbors. A router then establishes a transmission control protocol (TCP) session and exchanges BGP messages to convey routing information.
Because the routers are manually configured, establishing a full mesh constitutes a significant operational problem in terms of configuration management. This has led to the wide-spread adoption of route reflection, primarily in order to reduce the number of systems which configuration must be modified in order to introduce or remove a new internal BGP speaker.
Route reflectors have met with great success and have proliferated throughout the Internet. A route reflector advertises routing information to its clients (also called route reflector clients). Although route reflection can help ease the burden of configuration management, route reflection implies with it information reduction, which is not always desired. For example, route reflectors may not allow multiple paths to an edge router as the route reflector will send the “best” path.
Another solution to ease configuration management are AS confederations. Basically, an AS configuration is an AS that has been split into multiple sub-ASs. By reducing the number of entities at the AS level, configuration management is simplified at that level. AS confederations can aid in configuration management, but it comes at a cost of setting up and maintaining a more complicated hierarchy.
It would be beneficial to have a discovery mechanism that is designed to address the problem of introducing (or removing) a BGP speaker into a BGP mesh without implying any other behavior change when compared to manual configuration. Additionally, it would be beneficial if the discovery mechanism worked automatically and seamlessly with existing protocols and network configurations, including those with route reflectors and AS confederations.